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NASA Says Space Station Had Loss of Control From Thruster Glitch

NASA Says Space Station Had Loss of Control From Thruster Glitch

The International Space Station lost control of its rotational movement, known as attitude, on Friday after a Russian Soyuz spacecraft kept firing its thrusters at the end of a routine test.

Russian flight controllers were performing a scheduled thruster firing test on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft that is docked to the space station and scheduled to return to Earth late Saturday with three Russian crew members. The test window ended at 5:13 a.m. ET but the Soyuz thruster kept firing, triggering a 30-minute loss of attitude control. NASA said the station has been returned to a stable configuration.

“NASA and Roscosmos are collaborating to understand the root cause,” NASA said in a blog post Friday. The Soyuz is scheduled to undock from the ISS at 9:14 p.m. ET Saturday.

The incident is similar to a July 29 mishap when a new Russian service module, called Nauka, attached to the ISS unexpectedly began firing its thrusters.

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